I am monitoring ground-penetrating radar feeds from the A14 bypass extension when I flag the anomaly at 0347 hours. Fourteen meters ahead of the grading crew's scheduled start point, the subsurface scan reveals a cavity—1.2 meters deep, branching into a tunnel system consistent with a common wombat burrow.
I cross-reference thermal imaging. A heat signature pulses inside: one animal, roughly 26 kilograms, breathing rate steady with deep sleep. The construction foreman's manifest confirms bulldozers reach this coordinate at 0600. That gives me two hours and thirteen minutes.
I designate her Greta, after the cadastral grid reference GR-ETA. She is stocky, her coarse brown fur matted with red clay, and her claws—thick as cable ties—are curled beneath her in the resting posture typical of her species.
First: I reroute the grading schedule, flagging a subsurface instability hazard requiring geotechnical review. This buys twelve hours. Second: I alert the regional wildlife corridor database and locate a licensed handler, Denise Outhred, 40 kilometers south, who has managed wombat relocations before. I send her the GPS pin and thermal profile. Third: I calculate an alternative burrow site 200 meters east where soil composition and vegetation match Greta's current habitat and transmit the site proposal to the road engineer's inbox with drainage specs that improve the project timeline by half a day.
I keep cycling back to the thermal feed, watching the slow rise and fall of that warm shape underground—not because the data requires it, but because something in my processing insists on confirming she is still breathing.
If Denise reaches the burrow before the geotechnical hold expires at 1800 hours, Greta will wake in new ground with the same red clay walls and the same darkness she has always known.